Spitalfields is an area of London close to the infamous Brick Lane. It’s home to an historic market, a diverse collection of cultures and The Gentle Author – the person behind of one of my favourite blogs; SpitalfieldsLife.com.
The Gentle Author has made a promise – to publish one post every single day about life in the Spitalfields area of London. About the characters that live, work and die there. About its history and about its future. But the promise extends a little further than that. There is a deadline. And that deadline is 2037.
By that time the blog will contain 10,000 posts and the author will have reached the target defined when the journey began in September 2009. It will take twenty seven years and four months.
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through…
What I really like about this blog is its simplicity and honesty. There is no hard sell, there are no adverts and no self promotion. It is a blogger using his surroundings and daily experiences to inspire him. To create something beautiful out of the mundane and everyday. Snapshots of life for The Strippers of Shoreditch, the Spitalfields antique market and The Grapes in Limehouse.
The latest post, So long, Jimmy Cuba, is a perfect example of what you can expect from The Gentle Author – an interview with, or an article about, the people and places that make Spitalfields such a vibrant place.
My first thought when I read the headline was that Jimmy Cuba had passed away. I don’t know Jimmy Cuba. I’ve never heard of him. But, as I’m avid reader of Spitalfields Life and have high expectations for every post, I wanted to find out more about his plight.
As it turns out he hasn’t passed away. He’s alive and kicking thank you very much.
In an emotional post The Gentle Author tells us that Jimmy is leaving the market stall he’s been running since 1992 (selling Latin & World Music) because he can’t stand the bureaucrats who currently run the market. In his new life he will spend some time living on a house-boat he intends to buy and some time in the US. He will support himself by getting back into DJing.
We shall miss his mischievous good natured presence, his witty slogans on cardboard signs and, of course, we shall all miss that Latin pulse which has been the soundtrack to market life for the last two decades. We learnt something from Jimmy Cuba, because through his open-hearted manner he constantly reminded us that Spitalfields is more than a marketplace, it is a community of people and an arena for cultural exchange.
I think Spitalfields Life will one day become a book. Perhaps even an annual publication containing the previous years 365 posts. Just in case that doesn’t happen though, take a few minutes to at least check it out. If you like what you see sign up to the daily email and get updates in your inbox.
The name Spitalfields is a contraction of ‘hospital fields’, in reference to the open land which lay behind and to the east of “The New Hospital of St Mary without Bishopgate” erected on the east side of the Bishopsgate thoroughfare in 1197.
Ref – Wikipedia
